Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:25:30 GMT

... I'm thinking that something similar is what causes my stroke to work so much better when I use a wider arm entry and extend my shoulders forward as I enter? That seems to let my chest "fall" downward instead of me "pressing" it downward, and my butt also seems to rise, in the sort of "pivot" motion I've observed in good fliers.... Very well put! And, I forgot to mention that nugget, so thanks for the reminder. Yes! I also thrust the shoulders forward as well, as i'm 'opening up the chest' (as they say in yoga class), which results in the movement you just described. i've been encouraged a lot lately to use the 'one armed fly' drill to get a better understanding of the timing. when i had it properly demonstrated to me recently, being told to pay particular attention to the head movement, the light bulb went on... so you may want to pursue that approach as well. Sounds like you got all the information you need... and they you just need to work on it. (ha-ha, yeah rite! "just"). :"> Have Fun!

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:41:03 GMT

to illustrate this... try standing up in a streamlined position (arms up). if you want, try standing first with your back against a blank wall (with no baseboard if possible), and get as much of your body (heals to spine to hands) pressed against the wall as you can (this is like something i learned in yoga class). How well you can accomplish this will tell you how flexible, or supple, you are here. with this flatness in mind, step away from the wall and rotate the shoulders back... like pinching the shoulder blades together. if you rotate your arms as well, so the thumbs point forward (i.e. thumbs first entry) you should be able to get even more shoulder rotation (pinching). I've always known I had poor flexibility/range of motion in my shoulders but... If I stand with my arms up in a streamlined position with hands together I can't move my shoulder blades at all! It takes a concerted effort to get my arms directly above my head at all, and once there I don't have any mobility at all. To get my shoulder blades together I have to move my hands out a little beyond shoulder width, which is where I've been trying to shift my hand entry to...

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:11:49 GMT

Thanks a lot for writing that all out Bud! It will take some time to digest but I just had to reply on this one paragraph: i think i've been interpreting the 'pressing of the chest' all wrong all this time. it is not so much a press of the chest as it is an opening of the shoulders on entry (which forces the chest cavity down). I thought exactly that first sentence myself recently! I hadn't figured out the shoulder movement as exactly but I'm thinking that something similar is what causes my stroke to work so much better when I use a wider arm entry and extend my shoulders forward as I enter? That seems to let my chest "fall" downward instead of me "pressing" it downward, and my butt also seems to rise, in the sort of "pivot" motion I've observed in good fliers. Anyway, thanks again, I'll digest further and reply more later.

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 06:50:17 GMT

... The faster I go the easier it is to stay high in the water.... some days i feel this is an undeniable truth... some days i'm not so sure. hi Lindsay... not seen you post here in a while until just recently... welcome back. i recall that i joined this board about the time i started really getting into my fly practice. i've watched all of your threads and posts, especially on fly, with great interest. thanks for the updates and recent contributions. i really like your teeter-totter analogy... very coolbeans. ;-) when i watch your fly vid here on this thread the first things that pop into my head are: 1. he seems really tight across the shoulders on the recovery 2. he seems to go up more than forward on the breath these are common problems... i'm more-or-less still dealing with both myself. about all i can offer for a solution is study, practice, and a good coach. based on my own experience i'm at a point where i can experiment with body position and movement in my fly practice. i've been doing some fly at every practice for well over 5 years now. right now i'm experimenting a lot with shoulder positioning and rotation. i'm also experimenting with body position and movement a lot. more specifically i'm trying to maintain more suppleness in my stroke... relaxing into it.... it's that Yoga thing all over again... relaxing the muscles you don't need, and activating the muscles you do need to accomplish the task. That Frolander Flexible Legkicks vid that George put up comes immediately to mind. (if you can download vids like this and watch them in something like QuickTime you can step them through one frame at a time... VERY Coolbeans!) i think the most basic problem regular folks have in starting fly is that missed timing is so unforgiving, and this is combined with with some critical, and sometimes very subtle movements that are only well executed in a motion that flows, rather than jerks. in essence: finesse is WAY more important than speed and power. i need to note here that i do what i now call 'glide fly'. the term 'slow fly' drew a lot of negative responses (and imagery too i believe). 'relaxed fly' was a bit better, but that gets some negative press and imagery too. both slow and relaxed may apply at times, but it is easier for me to visualize myself gliding through the motions. when i do this best, i definitely get the best results. i recently feel i've made some breakthroughs with the 'pressing the chest' concept. i've noticed that the opening of the shoulders at the end of the recovery, combined with the timing and amplitude of the kick here, have a major impact on the efficiency of the stroke at this point. i think i've been interpreting the 'pressing of the chest' all wrong all this time. it is not so much a press of the chest as it is an opening of the shoulders on entry (which forces the chest cavity down). to illustrate this... try standing up in a streamlined position (arms up). if you want, try standing first with your back against a blank wall (with no baseboard if possible), and get as much of your body (heals to spine to hands) pressed against the wall as you can (this is like something i learned in yoga class). How well you can accomplish this will tell you how flexible, or supple, you are here. with this flatness in mind, step away from the wall and rotate the shoulders back... like pinching the shoulder blades together. if you rotate your arms as well, so the thumbs point forward (i.e. thumbs first entry) you should be able to get even more shoulder rotation (pinching). you should notice two things when you do this 1. the chest is 'pressed' forward (out, or what would be 'down' while doing fly) 2. the pelvis rotates back (your butt pooches out) the kick will naturally flow into, or along with, this movement... Eureka! i believe it is hard to detect this movement in the 'super swimmer' vids because they are so finely tuned the movement is remarkably subtle, plus the bubbles and/or camera angle can obscure the view. but if you look closely enough (in a frame by frame viewing)... you can detect it. for me this is the truest glide point. if i can execute power and form correctly beforehand, i can easily maintain forward momentum here, and not have my speed completely die at this point (especially by breathing to late)... keeping the stroke as flat as possible... i can get a really good glide here. try as i may, i need the time here to prepare my mind and (poor old tired arthritic) shoulders for the next cycle... so i glide a bit. on better days i have less of a glide and less amplitude in the stroke as well (and consequently a feeling of better speed for less effort). yet i still watch in total awe the vids of folks starting the catch pretty much immediately upon entry. also, i know my arms usually go too deep on the entry, but keeping in the spirit of the times i choose to blame it on something else (namely my arthritic shoulders). this glide motion allows my body to flow through the (lowest amplitude possible) sine wave motion, with the (preferably RELAXED) arms drifting back to the surface during the glide, always maintaining forward motion, to start the next pull. anyway... keeping things flat (streamlined) definitely helps my efficiency. and i too find that sometimes not trying to kick helps a lot in finding the correct timing and/or body position. breathing early is essential! well... i reckon that is enough for now. HTH.

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:31:54 GMT

You must hang out with Matysek too much :p WAY too much. :cool::coffee::coffee::)

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:10:23 GMT

the major thing you're missing is intensity. Maybe you just weren't trying very hard, but that looked like you were half asleep. I think there's some truth in that, at least in that there is a minimum speed at which I can swim the style I am working on. When practicing with fins if I work up a little extra speed off the wall before starting full stroke, even if I then don't use my legs much the rest of the length. The faster I go the easier it is to stay high in the water. In any case, I am still working on the various tips people have given and feel I am making progress, hopefully the team will do another video night soon so I can see if I'm on the right track.

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:51:07 GMT

Does anyone know where i could purchas the phelps/bowman DVD? Type the words "Phelps Bowman DVD" into Google. You'll find a whole bunch of vendors.

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:50:25 GMT

You must hang out with Matysek too much :p Type the words "Phelps Bowman DVD" into Google. You'll find a whole bunch of vendors.

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

debgort — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:38:38 GMT

Does anyone know where i could purchas the phelps/bowman DVD?

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:30:23 GMT

Clean a smooth 1956 Olympic 100 meters fly women video.google.ca/videoplay Ted Erickson an old buddy marathon swimmer swimming 100 fly at 78 years of age. www.youtube.com/watch

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 13:27:03 GMT

it looks good. try to clean it up and make as little splash as possible. stretch your back so you can move more like a dolphin. the major thing you're missing is intensity. Maybe you just weren't trying very hard, but that looked like you were half asleep.

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 10:25:32 GMT

Lindsay it sounds like you are getting it. The legs do workout fine for sure without thinking about the kick. They will just fall into place, when you keep the front end clean and kick from the shoulders and not allowing the kick to exit the water. The kick is a little thump an A BIG THUMP and it will let you know exactly when it feels right.

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 09:53:17 GMT

Well George it turns out you were right, I do much better when I concentrate primarily on the front end and mostly let the kick just happen. When I tried concentrating on the kick timing it was fairly disasterous. Still a long way to go but I think I'm making progress. Thanks for the good advice!

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:34:52 GMT

My guess is you've already seen this Go Swim video. It's a tough drill, but does help visualize the timing of the second kick. www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:51:00 GMT

Thanks George. Unfortunately for me, I think that I have practiced the bad timing so much that a lot of the time when it starts to "feel natural" I'm actually slipping back into my old pattern. After watching the team videos several times over in slow motion it seems pretty plausible that a lot of the slamming the arms into the water, diving down, excessive gliding and sculling, etc. is an attempt at compensating for the hips sinking due to the late kick. If so, I think if I fix the kick the "hard entry" should go away, and that should be a good check on whether I've got it right. Thanks Ian, the difference in how close our hands come together is pretty easy to see, I'll have a go at getting them closer. I've experimented with side breathing in fly, but had troubles with not keeping level and one hand hitting the water every so often, especially when swimming through other people's wakes. I actually swam breaststroke breathing to the side for a while... :eek: Oh, to be coordinated. :shakeshead: Just got an email that the pool has closed for the day due to the storm. :frustrated:

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:50:01 GMT

Lindsay, A couple of things to try that may or may not help, no guarantee………. 1) On your pull, pull to under the body before exiting at the hips. Think of almost touching your hands together under the body at hip level. This stops the hips from dropping and interfering with your pull. The video of your team mate from the front shows that she does this. 2) Try fly breathing on the side (like freestyle) to keep flatter more easily, and experience the feeling of always moving forward and not up (to breath) and down. Ian

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:41:52 GMT

I found it was easy to pick up the sequence for the kicks by letting the body do what came naturally when I concentrated on the arms. Clean entry clean exit and not hitting the water when they travelled foreward to the entry. My coach of the day always made sure the feat did not exit the water. Firby always talked about the legs being in the second wave. This was after I had started to swim in the marathon races and I only did butterfly with Dan Sherry when he was getting ready to break the world record for the 100 yards butterfly.

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:35:22 GMT

Thanks Zegmal, I've always found it paradoxical that the one-kick fly style eliminates what two-kick fliers call the "big" kick (kicking the hands out of the water). One would think that you would drop the "little" kick (kicking the hands into the water). This probably says something about the importance of the little kick in reorienting the body out of the elevated shoulder position and the role of the kick in issues other than propulsion. The drill in the video deals with the second (hands exit) kick, while I'm referring to the first (hands enter) kick. Possibly it might just come down to focusing on finishing the kick at the same time the hands reach full extension and enter the water. I'm feeling much better today and am looking forward to getting back in the water and playing with this. Provided the current heavy snowfall warning doesn't close things down... :frustrated:

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 16:48:29 GMT

I've been sick the last few days and have used the spare time to review the video of the twenty or so swimmers on our team, as well as looking at several videos of elite butterfly swimmers and I noticed something I found a little surprising. Every one of the elite swimmers did a kick in the last half of their recovery, *before* their hands entered the water. Not one of the swimmers on the team with a generally flawed looking stroke did this kick with this timing, most did the kick after the hands had entered. Every one of the elite swimmers had their torsos in a downward angle (shoulders below hips) when their hands entered, none of my teammates with stroke issues did. Pretty much all my teammates sank during the recovery and then pulled various maneuvers in an attempt to get their hips up and their bodies more level (although some never made it out of a tilted up position). It makes sense that gravity on its own will pull the body down in the same orientation it went up in (shoulders up to get a breath) and that an upward force on the lower body, resulting from the downsweep of the kick, combined with the upper body falling back into the water with an assist from gravity will pivot the body into the desired downhill position. It's also makes sense that a knee-only upsweep, timed to coincide with the body falling back into the water, will actually push the lower body down into water, and this is what most of my teammates (and I) are doing. So, why is it that novice fliers seem to gravitate toward this flawed timing? And is there any drill or methodology to help us move the kick timing forward to match that of the elite fliers? Is the late kick a symptom or a cause of poor technique? (i.e. will fixing it turn me into an elite swimmer? :D Or will fixing something else fix the late kick automatically?) I can think of a couple plausible explanations. The recovery is faster than the pull so an even kick timing would produce a late hand-reentry kick. If you are used to landing in the water at an upward angle, and therefore losing a lot of speed/momentum, that late kick is just the thing to get the hips back up and forward movement happening again - so it is kind of a self-reinforcing bad habit.

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:12:37 GMT

Thanks Ande, I have to say I'm tempted to catch a plane to Texas! Timing has been difficult because the pace clocks are way out of sync, but I'll see what I can do when I get back to the pool, right now I'm going through a large box of kleenex a day... jmeyer, I think you are right about breathing late, I'm trying to work on that. Did you really mean entering too wide? Generally feedback has been to enter wider, which I've been working on and am finding feels better. I found an amazing slow motion shot on the Go Swim Butterfly with Misty Hyman that perfectly illustrates the timing of the kick during the recovery, the downward movement of the thighs is definitely what pops her hips up (along with the shoulders coming down), and then her knees go up as much as her ankles go down, which keeps that kick relatively shallow. Phelps' kick is similar. My knees don't go back up so my ankles end up really deep. And my kick is too late, my hips have already sunk. Lots to work on!

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:33:09 GMT

For sure I can say, like others have, that your hands enter too far apart. Keep them shoulder width apart at the entry. Then scull out, then back in under the neck, then push straight back to just below the belly button, and then flare your hands out. What I'm not 100% certain about is that you may be breathing too late. It looks like your arms and head collapse down on the water at the same time. I think you want to get your head down sooner, which might only be possible if you breathe sooner. It's hard to for me to see this in the clip, but perhaps it's something to think about.

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:51:23 GMT

Hi Lindsay, Not sure if you have this book. Take a look at page 92 for starters. It's very helpful. Like in any stroke...keeping the head down ensures that the hips stay high. And as Jimmy says...that's a good thing. Sounds like you're making the breakthrough. books.google.com/books

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:46:16 GMT

At practice last night I got at least a few glimmers of what I hope is my new fly style, without the fins. On top of trying to get a quick early breath and staying shallow I thought a bit about Jonathan's point about the finish. It does seem that really accelerating the end of the arm action helps with staying low over the water and staying flat as the arms reenter. I think part of the thing with fins is just that you go faster and it is easier to stay flat when you are going faster. I also tried to deemphasize the kick, but also keep my legs relatively straight and as high in the water as possible. I'm not sure but it did seem that I could keep my hips up a little better if I pressed down with my thighs a little in the latter part of the recovery. I ran across an interesting video on youtube, it is a promo for the TI BetterFly for Every Body video: youtube.com/watch The video talks about two styles, demonstrated by Terry and Stephan. Stephan's style is much shallower than Terry's, and it made me wonder what he was doing differently (see the attached pics and the video). Certainly one thing is he never bends his knees anywhere near as much as as Terry, which made me wonder if keeping the legs straighter for longer might reduce sinking? A bit of background, when I learned fly a few years ago I decided I wanted to do the 200 fly, and I think that led me to a style with a lot of glide and I think up and down. This is what I am trying to get away from now. QuickSilver, please keep on telling me to keep low and shallow, I think it is starting to sink in, and I think it's leading me in the right direction!

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

ande — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 11:28:13 GMT

I think you'd benefit from a flatter stroke (less amplitude) and faster arm turn over with no pause out front I could fix it with an in person Swim Faster Faster session time yourself for 25's Thank you Ande, QuickSilver and George! I devoted a good chunk of my workout yesterday to working on a wider entry and immediate catch and I think it is going to help a lot. It felt like it took a lot less effort, more energy going forward and less up and down. It also felt faster but that may have just been because the turnover was faster, I didn't time or count strokes per length. I also tried to get my elbows higher and to adjust the timing of the kick a bit. I wonder if my over-large kick was a symptom of trying to "force" my chest (and extended arms) down and hips up. With the wider entry it seems like my chest "just falls" into the water and the hips pop up without me having to put much effort into it. I was concentrating on the front end so I'm not positive but it felt like the kick was lower amplitude - I was using fins so that I could do more lengths without having to contend with exhaustion. (The feel was very different compared to my old style with fins, not just compared to swimming without fins!) Tomorrow I'll see how it goes without fins. It will be interesting to see how different it looks on video because it feels very different. There's a woman on my team of comparable speed, but with a much more economical looking stroke, I see that she has a wide entry: youtube.com/watch I really hope this works out because for the amount of time I've spent working on my fly it should be a lot better than it is! It would be great to have some visible improvement. Thanks again for the advice so far and for anything more anyone has to offer!

RE: Butterfly Help/Video Analysis

Former Member — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:56:07 GMT

Two things I have noticed in Jimmy's video and video of elite swimmers is that really good flyers hips don't actually move up and down that much, they stay pretty close to the surface all the time. Your welcome Lindsay. What you stated is the key to butterfly rather than butter~struggle. Chin down = high hips = zero gravity. And yes Jimmy Shea is a super nice guy. Hope he does well.